The PATRIOT Act’s principal author, U.S. Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner, said on Sunday’s “UpFront with Mike Gousha” that the law needs to be amended after revelations about broad-ranging NSA domestic data collection.

While he said Edward Snowden, the NSA contractor who leaked the information, should be extradited and tried for revealing the classified information, he agreed Snowden did the public a favor by revealing the wide scope of the data sweeps.

Advertisement

Related Content

“I think he did the American public a favor by showing that,” the Menomonee Falls Republican said on the program, produced with WisPolitics.com. “This certainly was not what was contemplated when the PATRIOT Act was passed. I was the principal author of the PATRIOT Act, and I know that everybody who supported it made a conscious effort to balance national security needs with civil liberties requirements that make America different than practically any other country.”

He said the law’s business records provision used by the data collection program was intended only to be use used to get records of foreigners targeted by an authorized terror investigation—not against U.S. citizens or legal residents.

The uproar President Obama has faced over the issue, Sensenbrenner said, “is a self-inflicted wound because he went beyond the PATRIOT Act.”

Added Sensenbrenner: “We need to amend the FISA Act. We need to amend the PATRIOT Act business records section so that this type of snooping is only targeted to people who have been identified as foreigners trying to do us harm.''

He added that surveillance of Americans or legal residents should be done through subpoenas and warrants, so there is due process.

--Sensenbrenner also said tougher border security and sanctions against employers who hire people illegally in the country must come before any legalization program in immigration reform.

“If we don’t do border security first before any type of legalization program, then we make the mistake of 1986, which was supposed to end the issue of illegal immigration once and for all and instead made it worse,” Sensenbrenner said.

--State Superintendent Tony Evers said on the program that the statewide voucher expansion Gov. Scott Walker will sign this week threatens public schools.

Evers said the expansion will eventually lead to the state having a “full-blown” second system of publicly funded private and parochial schools that will divert over $1 billion a year from public schools.

“I don’t think we have to create a separate system of publicly funded private and parochial schools,” Evers said.

The expansion is to be capped at 500 students the first year of the budget cycle that begins July 1 and 1,000 the second. But Evers expressed concern that schools in Milwaukee, which are not subject to those caps, could set up satellite campuses in other part of the state.

Walker indicated he would veto language that would allow such a move.

Evers was also critical of a state budget provision that provides tax breaks to parents who send children to private schools. The tax breaks, he said, will take money out of the system that would normally go to public schools.

Although he opposes the expansion, Evers said his department is the right one to oversee the program and said it has done so fairly in the past.

-- Also on the program, Milwaukee Metropolitan Association of Commerce Vice President of Government Affairs Steve Baas and Milwaukee technology entrepreneur Kelly Fitzsimmons said the state budget as passed last week will be good for businesses and entrepreneurs.

“I think this budget does a lot of great things directionally,” Baas said, pointing out that it reduces taxes on individuals and businesses, lowers the compliance burden and simplifies the tax code.

Fitzsimmons there is “welcome news for entrepreneurs in the budget.”

“If there is less tax burden, if you have less regulatory burden, less compliance burden--all of that ultimately makes it easier and more cost-effective to have our businesses in Wisconsin,” Fitzsimmons said.

Fitzsimmons while taxes may not be the most important factor early on for entrepreneurs, who rarely see a profit in their first years, lower taxes could influence whether entrepreneurs remain in the state and grow their companies.

Baas noted that entrepreneurs and existing companies need to be convinced to be here and are looking for signals about the direction of the state.

“This budget sends a lot of positive signals that this Legislature and this governor are working very hard to lower the tax burden, to lower the regulatory burden, to work as partner with business, be it a startup, be it established businesses,” Baas said. “Those are things that don’t go unnoticed in the competitive environment of job creation. “

-- The two also discussed separate legislation creating a venture capital fund with $25 million in government investment.

Fitzsimmons said the state has done well working with angel investors already, and making Wisconsin more competitive in the venture capital arena is the next step.

While some would like to see a bigger fund, Baas said venture capital is a “dicey area” for politicians, and the state took a good, but “understandably cautious” first step.